The World Economic Forum has identified twelve transformative agricultural technology areas with the potential to generate positive impacts along food value chains. These range from the increased consumption of alternative proteins to measures that can make food systems more resource-efficient and climate-resilient such as precision agriculture, gene-editing and biological-based crop protection, and technologies that improve traceability.
While technological solutions alone can be detrimental in the absence of contextual understanding and relevance, there is no doubt that breakthrough technologies offer one of our greatest hopes for making progress in a long-neglected sector. The challenge is to agree on their appropriate combination for different food value chains and geographic contexts, and to develop the supportive policies, investments and capacity-building to scale their implementation in ways that are equitable, efficient and environmentally sustainable.